In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculia...r nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individu...als, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. ...Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sor...t of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring o...ur minds and eyes to bear on them.... We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives. The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,--not a grain more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosop...hy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not f...or the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that th...e task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »